Snow
by planetslayer
Summary: A glimpse of the Wasteland
1. Chapter 1

_The Stranger had begun to die. _

A large wheel of black-red blood had pooled at the base of a thin, white-barked tree, beside a pair of deep footprints buried into the powder snow, where the Stranger had stood for some time. Adrenaline had fuelled a beating pace for over five kilometres, through a thin rock canyon and into the sparsely treed plateau beyond, but here his heart had begun to slow and the cold numbness of the wound was replaced with stabs of pain like lightning strikes, rebounding about his body. He had taken rest behind the skeletal tree, removing his hand from his lower torso to inspect the depth of the wound. Blood, hot and wet, slicked his hand; he had vainly smeared his fingers down the smooth bark trying to wipe it off, the red tarn soaking through the fabric of his ruined shirt making it glisten in the harsh morning light. A thick trickle of blood flowed down his left leg, forming a deep crimson pool at his feet.

Jane's fingers dug into the cherry stain, feeling the hovering warmth of the blood still lingering despite the ice. _Not far, _Jane thought. The Stranger had stood here not more than five minutes before, feeling each breath beginning to ache with an unsubsiding pain that seemed to amplify with each passing moment, and slowly the Stranger had realised a fragile truth: He was about to die.

Blood led off in a delicate lace of drops and smears across the snowfield; now the boot marks that paralleled the trail had begun to sink deeper into the soft snowpack as the gait of the fleeing Stranger had slowed. Jane held her .44 Revolver gripped in one hand, probing the thin alpine brush with her eyes. If the Stranger had planned to backtrack and ambush her in his pursuit, this was the ideal place for it, where the distance of sightlines were low and undulations in the snowpack gave rise to areas of crud-filled dead ground. Even so, the pace and fall of the boot prints had begun to shorten as the Strangers endurance had finally given out, and leaving the trees, the ground sloped slowly upwards into a long soft hill; bald, white, virgin snow except for a thin trail of boot marks trod over its peak and out of sight.

The carcass of the aircraft looked more like a dead bird than a machine, the fractures that ringed its tubular hull and broke the wings made it appear limp, like a lifeless gull washed up on a white sand shoreline; rotting and stagnant. Drifts of pure white snow had partially buried the grey skin of the aircraft. The tail was completely missing, replaced by a dark cavity leading into the body of the beast; the string of footprints led into the darkness.

The aircraft had come to rest in a shallow saddle between the soft hill behind and a steep, craggy peak ahead; a fortress-like spire of razor rocks thinly veiled under drifts of snow, its mighty frame now dwarfed by both distance and the size of the mountain beyond. Above, the clear dome of pure blue sky and the ring of snow-capped mountains that formed the horizon framed the crash site; of a dying Stranger sheltering in the body of a dead bird, amidst the overwhelming enormity of the Tasmanian wilderness. Jane paused, then slowly sat down, her eyes playing upon the lonely image, feeling the soft but biting wind play across the snow, the land beneath her and the sky above.

The Sun had almost reached its zenith by the time Jane moved again. She took her time, paralleling the footprints in the snow until she reached the open wound in the tail of the aircraft. Snow had accumulated over time to form a solid floor amongst the rows of chairs that formed the cabin. Parts of the interior façade had been stripped away, baring the aluminium skeleton of the aircraft, like the giant ribcage of a dead whale. Jane moved with caution, handgun at her side, through the shadow filled cabin until she found the Stranger.

He had obviously been living here for some time; there was a fire pit built with rocks, and kindling piled in one corner. A bed roll was laid down, although the Stranger himself had died with his back to the wall, legs flayed, eyes glassy and open, an old .45 Auto still gripped in his hand. It had been hours, and in the cool the body had stiffened quickly and was already beginning to turn grey. A pool of blood had fanned out around him, like black ink in the shadow. Jane checked for a pulse but there was none: Jane had killed him. She breathed for a moment, considering this, and then set her mind to what had to be done.

After the Stranger was buried, Jane lit the small fire inside the belly of the aircraft, kicking a few logs on and watching the wicked flame dance and spit fireflies into the cold air. It took a long time for the sun to go down, and even when it finally did dip below the horizon it was never truly dark.

Jane left the frame of the aircraft before the sun came up, backtracking along the line of footprints until she reached the creek line, where she and the Stranger had encountered each other the previous morning.

Jane had been following the creek line for a few days, running steadily south. She used a rock and had cracked a hole in the ice, using the water to brush her teeth, sitting in quiet still of the morning sun.

There was a sound behind, and Jane had turned with a start. The Stranger already had his pistol up, facing her from the edge of the clearing forty meters distant, his feet dug into the creamy soil that lined the embankment leading down to the frozen creek line. The pistol was a .45 cal, and if the Stranger were any kind of shot he wouldn't miss a static target at that range. Jane was stunned; unable to run or fight. _Dead to rights._

His foot slipped. The Stranger stumbled as the ground gave out from below his boot, tilting him back he squeezed a single round into the sky as he fell, the resounding echo of the gunblast slapping Jane from her daze. She dove behind the log she had been using to place her belongings, pulling her pack down into the shadow and pulling a Nickel-plated .44 revolver from inside. A big heavy thing; Jane rose up and used the log to steady her weapon, head low, searching for a shot.

The Stranger had dropped from sight, rolling into low cover at the base of the embankment. He rose up firing wildly, his pistol barking, rounds lancing into the frozen cap of the creek, splintering the shell of ice with fountains of foam that burst upward like the water below was held pressurized below the ice crust.

Jane fired, the revolver suddenly burning hot in her hands. A single round scythed into the trees beyond the Stranger, landing with a solid crack. The Stranger fired back, finding his footing and taking cover behind the bulk of a fallen tree. His pistol held more rounds than the revolver, and could be reloaded faster, and the Stranger played out rounds with far greater pace than his opponent. Jane was careful, picking her shots. The Stranger peaked above the tree, and Jane fired again, the weapon jumping in her grip, wood splintering apart centimeters below the Strangers face.

He fired again, two shots; they cracked and sung as they passed on each side of Jane's head. There was a metallic crunch, and the Pistol silenced abruptly. Jane heard him swear. _Jammed!_

Jane hurdled the Log, advancing the twenty paces toward the Strangers position in a few seconds. The Stranger was lying prone, desperately reefing on the slide of the old Army-Issue Auto pistol, trying to clear the brass shell jammed in the feed port. He rolled over as Jane's shadow came above him, aiming the useless weapon upward. Jane fired; a single round pierced into his gut, the raw force of the burning bullet slamming against the Stranger, forcing the pistol from his hand. He tried to suck air, but was winded; his hand went to the wound as blood leached into the material of his clothing like Ink blots on writing paper. He came up from the ground, swinging with his free hand, his fist slammed into Jane's face, knocking her backward. Jane raised the pistol again and pulled the trigger, but the cylinder revolved with a dull click. The Stranger was already on her, throwing his weight against her, his forehead arching forward to connect with Jane's face, impacting with a solid thud. Jane hit the ground, sprawling on her back. The Stranger was panting, still gripping the weeping wound, standing above her. Their eyes had locked for a moment.

They both knew it: _The Stranger had begun to die. _

The Stranger turned and ran.

The line of footprints the Stranger had left where still cut into the snow, advancing up the steep cut of the rivers bank and out of sight. Jane walked back to where she had sheltered: Her pack still lay there, covered by a thin film of frost. The Stranger must've been carrying a pack too, and dropped it as he had lost his footing and fell down onto the creek shore. A green army-looking thing, Jane turned it over and let the content spill out onto the filthy snow. A Blanket, lighter, fishing wire and a hook, canteen, a box of .45 cal soft nose rounds, a plastic bag with dried meat inside, and a metal compass; Jane inspected each and placed them inside her bag – even if she had no need for them, they may be good for trade. The .45 cal rounds would be useful for the pistol she had acquired, along with a switchblade knife she had found on the body. Jane swept the base of the bag with one hand, and felt something: a black plastic film canister. She shook it and felt something moving inside – a piece of paper folded up. Unfolded, it was deeply creased and clearly old, stained the colour of coffee; it showed lines and crosses, intersecting at places. The top had been coloured in blue, and someone had written 'sea'. It showed a coastline, and rivers, mountains and roads, all marked slightly differently. In the centre, it showed a conglomeration of buildings all surrounding a single giant hole – like a gouge taken from the earth. Next to it were three words, underlined and circled.

City of Prospect.


	2. Chapter 2

_Wind had picked up from the south during the day, carrying the biting air with it. _Lucas breathed in long, steady rasps, hot breath from his wretched lungs passing through a material wrap shielding his face from the still, bitter air. A Pale white predusk glow spilled like water, softly waning over the rolling pitch-black mountain silhouette that skirted the western horizon. It cast long shadows across the tortured urban mesa has it fell, skeletal fragments standing like shards of shattered glass, stabbing at angles through the snow-dusted tundra; concrete fingers from the frozen corpse of a city held in perpetual rigor, clawing at an apathetic sky. A chinook wind moved thin whisps of low, white cloud off the city and onto the hills to the east, pallid light falling into the cracks and recesses of hollowed streets and buildings; the dull glow burned bright in Lucas' eye, as if it were clear midsummers daylight, the breadth of the boot-stomped city yawning out ahead of where he lay, like a sea crushed eggshells stretching past the horizon.

_This is my hunting ground_

Lucas was old, but he remembered everything. He remembered where he had stood, almost two centuries before, on the day the world was set alight, and the flash had taken his skin and his voice and the sight in his left eye. He remembered the smell of civilization burning, tar-thick clots that saturated the air. He remembered what it looked like; sometimes the image burned so strongly it seemed real again, and this ice-encased world he now knew was simply some waking fantasy.

_The bomb had detonated in one single blinding throb of luminosity, spearing outward with a bone-jarring yammer as a sphere of plasma pushing out over the crushed remains of the city, soaking the shadow-filled urban wasteland in a moment of unquenchable light. Impossibly bright, it poured through darkened city blocks like liquid, lapping against the burned and bullet-mashed buildings, flooding the shops and side-alleys with its inescapable radiance. _

_Volleys of tracer fire poured through the streets as unrelenting firefights raged, ChiCom marauders and Coalition GIs skirmishing through the dark urban warrens; flashes of fire from explosive rockets splashing into abandoned cars, minigun fire pouring like water from a hose, gunships dosing thickly armoured battle tanks from above as they swooped and circled like a tornado of vultures, picking there prey from the streets below. Soldiers battled viciously; continuing to run, to fight, to die; seemingly unfazed in that fraction of instant as if the brilliance of the atomic blast were little more than just another hindrance – an obstacle on the battlefield._

_Then came the blast wave._

_From above, in the belly of the Vertibird, Lucas saw the city torn apart. The force of the impact turned the world into a vague blur like a shimmer of heat; Lucas felt the irresistible pressure ripple past across his flesh. Buildings sagged under the weight of blast front; thousands of tonnes of girder groaning against the force of the detonation. It pounded through the streets, assaulting the physical earth as a wall of pressure and heat, stripping up pavers, blowing through shopfronts, splintering brick into fountains of debris. Concrete and steel burned like paper as it flew, superstructures blasted clean of the burdens they held, scintillating shards of shattered glass falling like rain, all carried by the ripple of energy sweeping as a blade across the blackened husk of downtown. _

_The air shook, turbulence slamming against the body of the Vertibird as fire tore a hole in the sky. The bomb's electromagnetic pulse had fried the electrical grid, dropping out every piece of electronic equipment in the city like god had flicked a switch. _

_And for a moment, as the sky stood open, the bed of light below was silenced in expanding rings of darkness, and the steady thrum of anti-air fire and volleys of tracer spiralling through the darkness dimmed to nothing, and in that split second: time stood still. _

_Nothing but blissful silence._

_Lucas savoured but a single moment of the glorious panorama that blossomed above him: space. An endless sphere of light and darkness webbed together, extending outwards in every direction, the walls and voids of dauntingly elegant stars swirling together into dense currents and open expanses of silvery parahelions, the constellations and nebulous forms amalgamating with the utter darkness of the universe beyond into the commandingly portentous edifice of space. He was paralysed by the sight: It was simply awesome. _

_But the moment ended. The clear sky wheeled backward and the blackened land rose up before the nose of the aircraft. Lucas hit the limit of his restraint harness, straining upon his shoulders and pinning him into his seat. _

_And then the Vertibird fell._

Lucas held himself still, lying prone on the stone hard snow - filthy, and debris-littered - his fingers lightly wrapped around the body of his rifle. He was bound in grey rags and blankets, drenched in near darkness but for a fist sized hole through the concrete wall; a delicate funnel of faded dusk light gazing in with casual regard, apparent only from the shadow it threw. Ahead of him was the Riverside shoreline; a boulevard of shops and boutiques that overlooked the expanse of the Launceston River, piers and floating docks holding grand Yachts and Motor vessels in the soft roll of the water. As if snap frozen, the scene was now encased in ice; the River's breadth a flat, white slick extending out toward the docks on the far eastern shore. In between, a few boats were still visible, now lop-sided as if caught on a sand bar, locked into the frosted surface of the ice.

He had abandoned the previous days hunt in the factory district to the south-east, where the snow had become slush, and in the hint of daylight,tracks had become unclear. Experience and instinct informed every footfall: the path was too unknown, the chances of tracking him became slim in the crumbling and rusted confines of the tractor factory that dominated the estate, as the chances of an ambush increased. His enemy had advantage in this terrain, for many years hiding here inside the giant pressure chambers and using the conduits and ducts to move throughout.

Withdrawing in the predawn light though, Lucas had found an open sluice that led toward the mouth of a sewer system; he crawled through the sludgy, chemically-stained snow, holding his body in the dead ground of the ditch. As he did though, he came upon a single boot print, set heavily into the soft, wet slush, and tinged in yellow dust.

He had pushed a gloved finger in, and tasted it. Bitter, he spat it back into the mire. Still the taste lingered; some sort of treatment chemical: industrial and definitely toxic, not that it bothered Lucas at all. The kind of chemical that was used to treat metal before it was stamped into machine parts. The same kind of chemical that was stored at the north end of the train yard.

Lucas smiled.

_Out there_, he knew, _somewhere in the wasted city, my enemy is waiting to die._

The train yard was encased on three sides by blocks and blocks of warehouse and light industrial precincts, most reduced to tangled warrens of crumbled brick and steel; the one open side led outward to the towering loading gantries of the docks. Rough spider webs of rust-red steel and heavy rivets lead to the arching booms of the Dock cranes, poised above the ice, like spindly waterbirds held static with endless patience. The long cables that joined heavy pulleys rattled in the wind, producing high-pitched warbles as they vibrated, carried across the icy expanse of the river by still air and toward the masses of gutted office blocks that crowded the western shore.

The yard itself was a mass of train carriages on twenty or so paralleling tracks; it had served as a sort of supply depot for shipments to the island from the mainland to the north, loading and ferrying all matter of goods down the centre of Tasmania toward the capital Hobart in the south. They sat motionless, snow built upon there windward surfaces, roofs iced over.

Lucas knew the layout backward, which is why he dare not approach yet. He had been to the train yard a half dozen times in the last two decades, routing out Raiders who had camped out amongst the cars to escape the weather, or hunting Iceboar who huddled against the stagnant locomotives, feeling the nuclear energy from within there dwindling reactor cores flooding through time-damaged lead lining to strike there flesh, filling them with warmth. From the warehouse district, there were exactly sixteen separate paths to enter the trainyard; he knew them all, and each one presented individual obstacles. He knew of one shortcut, but he would not underestimate his prey's knowledge. From the fourth floor of an office building, Lucas used his snow-blasted scope to regard the expanse of the train yard, slowly sweeping from right to left. He was able to use both the cover of shadow and snow, even in the daytime; at some point in the past, part of the roof had caved in letting a solid dumping of snow follow, pilling up around the discarded office chairs and cubical walls, dusting the screens of computer terminals.

Lucas could see the sky. In the dying light, a thick roll of black cloud was tumbling in from the south, the Icy wind it carried slowly building as a deep gowl of thunder grew louder and more frequent, cutting across the expanse of the city with increasing urgency. The daytime temperature rarely peaked above 40F, and by night may drop to zero; the storm would carry the chill from the Antarctic, regurgitating it out over the mass of Tasmania; squalls of ice-thick wind flooded the streets like the surge of a tsunami, reducing visibility to near zero.

Lucas weighed this up in his mind. The advantage of zero visability were obvious in sniper warfare, although feeling his way across the ice–bound river was a sure death sentence. Tonight he would wait; watching, feeling the chill move through his bones.

Lucas was wrapped in a longcoat he had found while scavenging at the eastern fringe of the city some years ago, from the body of a wastelander. Raiders had taken a traveling party by surprise, killing the fighters with sniper fire from rooftops. The others had been captured; strung up and molested, flayed and dismembered, others thrown into a slit trench, dosed with flamer fuel and set alight. There were too many Raiders for Lucas to attack by daylight; instead he waited until nightfall, sneaking into their camp and silently killing the Guards one by one; using the flamer fuel to set fire to the others as they slept.

Lucas remembered the sound of the Raiders burning – screaming. The orange pulpy flame lick across them as they thrashed wildly, trying to extinguish the terrible heat that cooked upon there flesh. Afterwards they lay dead on the ground, their shriveled and blackened skin still smoldering, the stench thick and acrid.

_Now they are like me, _Lucas thought as he stood there, _Disfigured ghouls – ex humans – torched by a ghost of this awful city._

Lucas closed his eyes for a moment, and felt the freezing wind play into the office building with increasing force. It howled with distain, as if the City had come to resent his very presence here. Sometimes Lucas dreamed that it wasen't real, and all these years were swallowed up and gone and his old Sargeant appeared before him and patted him on the shoulder with a gruff smile and said "You did good, son" and he was on a plane back – back home to his Mom and Dad and the weight of this terrible nightmare lifted from him; He felt his lungs ease, and his mind slow, and his hands steady; and all of this – this Frozen scab burned into existence on the far side of the world – was the illusion.

But the howl of the wind grew and made the dream fragile. Lucas opened his eyes again, and was an old man lying in the ruins of a crushed building, surrounded by debris-littered snow, accompanied only by ghosts and haunted by memory.

_Sparking wires flashed as strobes within the broken remains of the Vertibird; lying prostrate and deformed between the solid walls of some alleyway. Lucas struggled with his Seat straps before cutting them, kicking out the window and clambering onto the skin of the vessel. His felt his left eye burning, as if a cigarette had been stubbed into it, and through it all he could see was black. He raised his head, staring toward the sky._

_There was almost no noise. Somewhere out to the east, an air-raid siren was still blaring, downed by the weight of the air and shear distance, whining into the stained sky. The wind stroked across the broken urban carapace, whispering as it rounded corners and pushed between cracks, surging and fading and surging; the ghostly call of a dying city._

_In the distance, beyond and above the reaching claws of the crushed city, the sickly shape of a mushroom cloud expanded, its monstrous form wracked with strobes of lightning within its bulk, turbulent and chaotic as it knifed into the sulfur sky, a dark welt blooming open like a wheel of blood spilling from the dark hollow of a stab wound. The air was hot; a deceitful wind that carried smoke and dancing embers across the cracked urban landscape with plumes of dust bursting out like flower bombs from the buildings as they continued to shed walls and panes of glass like dead skin, great facades crashing and detonating upon the tarmac as waves against a rocky & torturous shoreline; they left behind boney structures standing as ghastly cross-sections, baring dark and hollow interiors. _

_Everything became sharp._

_Splinters of glass hailed, and littered the debris-lined roadways. Cars were crushed, popping and deforming below the weight of concrete shards that hammered down upon them. Concrete reinforcement – long, slender threads of textured steel that webbed and lined the structure of buildings – lanced out as filthy needles, matted with great lumps of fractured concrete still held, in places, within the tendrils of grubby metal. Pipes were sheared off by tectonic force, forming rings of razors, like the teeth of a marine predator gnashing at its pray. The skyline was artificial – the blocky outline of buildings that broke line of sight. Above their shapes, columns of black smoke rose into the sky, mixing with the mass of the mushroom cloud that expanded to dominate the city. It was night, still, but the afterglow of fires that raged were reflected from the cloudbase to blanket the city in a shimmering, solemn light. _

_Tomorrow, _Lucas steeled himself_, I will kill my enemy._


	3. Chapter 3

Hello! I have decided how I am going to write my story, and basically what I will attempt to do is create a non-linear, 'hyperlinked' series of short stories, all revolving around similar places, people and events. I am not writing the short stories in order, so understand that while a chapter I post up may not feel like it has a direct connection to the other chapters YET, it will! I hope! This story is Part 1 of at least 3 or 4 parts of the one story. I hope all that made sense. Enjoy

If I had to give this story a name, it would be called "A Spy in Presaria"

* * *

><p><em>I love you<em>

Rain tattoos against the glass with a rapid tempo, individual drops lost against the greater tatter. They streak away, backed by there weight, light from beyond scattered into rivulets of red and blue and violet. The sky is invisible from behind the glass, no stars but no discernable clouds, just black and the glow of the city, throbbing beyond the Flinders Island harbour.

Kelley pushed his face up against the inside of the porthole, set with heavy rivets into the steel hull of the ship. Beyond, outside in the freezing gale, Water streaked in serpentine smears down the faces of buildings skirting the massive dockside, grey soaked black. The asphalt was slicked and white from the street lamps burning bright in the dark night storm. Thunder echoed to the south, deep and unseen, water on the road surface a constant finger-light tattoo multiplied to deafening proportions. Some of the dockside vendors were still open, neon tube lights glowing and flickering, humming softly below the sound of the raindrops. Curbs and alleys were filled with garbage, the detritus of a rotting city. Beyond the harbor, the metropolis had a pulse, itself almost lost to the sound of the storm. The ground was slicked, wet enough to send up little-fountains of water for every drop from above making the ground dance like the storm itself conducted it, massive and chaotically choreographed, thunderous and brilliant, deep and beckoning, tearing at the ears; malevolent, frenzied, unrestrained.

_I love you_

_I love you_

_I Love you_

_I'm in love with you_

_I miss you_

_I love you_

His eyes were still, a mind clouded and absent. Above the rain and the thunder comes the noiseless voice. Haunted by the ghost of the way she was, and the way he used to be.

_I love you_

And her face crystallised in the darkness, invisible lips form the words, trembling below eyes stained with streaks of long-since-dried tears.

_I don't think I love you the way you love me._

* * *

><p>In hoping for clear passage, Kelley knew he would not be so lucky.<p>

The storm had worsened, amplifying in both size and vigour as the mainland vanished behind the dense, blanketing seafog that hugged the entire shoreline of South-eastern Australia.

There had been a thunderstorm out to sea. The clear, open skies which had seemed to persist endlessly for the three weeks he had spent in Barrow dissipated with disquieting pace once out through the Heads, dawn replaced by a vague glow merely hinting below a rolling bank of weighted, pitch clouds tumbling in over the expanse of the Strait. The western passage was a wide, grey channel between twin, stony headlands, linking the flat city of Barrow to the Strait; its course was lined with Cardinal buoys, defining safety amongst the razor sharp remains of a dozen Chinese battle cruisers dead and silently listed upon the sea floor.

In the dwindling remains of twilight, Kelley stood on the portside gunwale watching the great rifts of stained land float by about them. To the east, across the sluggish drool of the passage waters, Philip Island was littered with a dozen points of warm orange light, wobbling and bobbing along lines of wooden fences. Sheppards and farm hands moved tirelessly about pens of Wombats, holding Gas lanterns aloft wooden poles. They inspected the fence lines for any intrusion in the night, before herding the giant mammals toward feed yards. The poor soil of the island made crop farming a pointless exercise, but the proximity of the pen walls to the high-tide shore would, on occasion, attract sealurks toward shallow waters, taking the lumbering beasts in the night and feeding upon them in the littoral. In the growing light, Kelley saw men with long, slender Barb-firing rifles, standing at intervals, eyes probing the ink-stained waters.

_Temperate Rain_ was a decent size; it spilled white deck light out onto the shimmering, lapping surface of the water, hugging the silhouettes of long boom-cranes perched upon the foredeck, casting them into hundred-meter long smears across the surface of the quiet sea. The journey to Presaria City would take two days, by the Captains estimates, but the steerage hold Kelley had let with his partner was more than comfortable for the trip.

Parallel with the heads, Kelley felt the growling wind of the open sea grow with immediacy, a bitter chill clutching in. He raised the collar of his cloak, pulling his arms in close around his body. In the shadow of the great pinnacle of rock that pronounced the headland, a small lean-to cabin was erected, a dim, cozy yellow glow seeping under the eave and cracks around a single doorway, a dim thread of woodsmoke winding up and away over the island. A sign was painted on wood, projecting from the roof - it read: _Point o' no return. _A boy sat on some rocks perched just above the water, a fishing pole dangling loosely before him; he cautiously gave a wave to the ship as it passed.

On passing the final set of buoys, Kelley could feel the motion of the sea below the tonnage of the steel-hulled vessel change from a flat, effortless table to something different – something deep and churning, and wholly malevolent. _Temperate Rain _rumbled from deep within, the twin bronze screws spinning up from a slow crawl to a blurring mass below the black, choppy cap of the water, the prow of the ship powering into the storm without hesitation cutting an impressive wake across the surge and roll of the ocean swell.

The crew of the tramp steamer hurried about the deck with an uncommon haste; in the month it had taken to cross the Pacific, he had never seen such keen alacrity expressed from a ships crew. A healthy plume of pale white steam billowed from the high, tubular stack, unaffected by the surges of rain now almost constant, heavy in their assault.

Inside his cabin, Kelley tried sleep for most of the morning, but was woken constantly by the roar and the sensation of falling, as if the ship had encountered a sinkhole or perhaps the edge of the world, before suddenly finding the trough between the waves and pitching sharply upward with overwhelming inertia, leaving Kelley's stomach in a bucket by his cot. He lay in the dark, eyes wide open, feeling the roll of the vessel below him; the unrelenting, unforgiving surge pounding upon it like a small tin toy tossed about by the whim of some petulant god.

Finally he dismissed the notion of sleep and rose tenderly, always gripping down hard on some fixture to avoid loosing his footing. He donned his longcoat and stepped out into the quiet companionway of the steerage quarter, finding his way up ladders and stairs to the conning tower. All the time he fought the tremendous shifts in inertia that felt as if it would pick him off his feet and plant his head through the ceiling.

He reached the helm with a few tender bruises. It was relatively quiet, which Kelley found surprising; quite opposed to the vigour of the storm that raged beyond the waist-up glass that stared forward, down the ship and out into the swarming sea. Kelley eased his way forward to a rail that ran below the window, gripping it firmly before staring out toward the stunning panorama of the storm around them, and the long foredeck of the ship extending outward, like a heavy plough pushing its way through the slamming assault of the strait. The Captain was at the helm; he drew from a long corn-cobb pipe gripped between his teeth, hands delicate but firm upon the oak wheel that stood within the centre of the space, making tiny but vital adjustments to course.

Howling rain and surf impacted with the blunt face of the gunwales sending a towering fountain of foam and spray surging out over the darkly lacquered deck, slapping down hard on the weather worn timber. The ship pitched and shook with every impact, yet still maintained its curious confidence as the steel wedge of its bow knifed into the rising walls of foam-laced swell, the face of the wavefront exploding across the steel into soaring fans of briny spray. The sea roared as it seethed against the freezing hull, raking down its length. Overhead, and into the distance, licks of lightning burned brightly, arching out in great rivulets, like the arteries of clouds illuminated for a fraction of a second against the pulpy black mass beyond.

"It'll be three days, if this keeps up" The Captain announced, without acknowledging Kelley directly. His accent was salt-tanged and rough, but rolled with the emphasis of an educated man.

"We're will we anchor?" Kelley returned, finally.

"Flinders Island. Mid-channel spit of rock. The harbour is decent, and the city has a sea-wall that will keep out the worst of it."

"City?" Kelley enquired, turning toward the Captain.

"That's one word for it, it's a fucking hovel, if you ask me, which you are". He paused for a moment and made an adjustment to the helm so minute Kelley doubted its importance. "City's a _Trol _haven. Was a whaling port til about ten years back, then those Trologs started flooding in. Apparently they were having some kind of fish-war with giant squid, and loosing"

"It's a refugee camp?"

"Ghetto, but I didn't say it". The captain looked sidewards, concerned as if they wrong ears may hear his prejudice. Kelley had never met a Trolog before, but had seen a few odd looking men scuttling about the ship in the evening before departing Barrow – Short, muscular and all entirely bald, they apparently possessed Gills upon there chests, and a webbed fin running the length of there spines.

Kelley turned back to the window. Throbs of lightning preceded yawning, echoing rumbles cascading across the dark ocean. The sunless day was illuminated almost solely by those images, flashes of light gone quicker than they come, captures in time of the towering cloud forms reaching piteously from the black heavens to the chaotic spray of the brooding ocean, the storm like a synapse, the thinnest cleft of apparent calm between the churning bulk of the clouds and the seething pulse of the ocean, arches of white hot light leaping the gulf between sky and sea in an instant, thousands a second, a constant cackle of thunder rising and waning with the rolling energy of the surf against the battered and tired ship.

And through the darkness, contrasted by the pulse of lightning, the black shape of an island rose from the waves, wetly inked into a turbulent canvas.

* * *

><p>They had not seen a blade of sunlight for the entire day, but Kelley was told that they made Harbour at dusk, sliding between two enormous gates that retracted into the enormity of the harbour seawall as the ship approached, and snapping closed behind. The wall reminded Kelley of some medieval embattlement; Trolog militia spread along the Fortification like Archers readied to defend the keep from Goths and Mongols.<p>

Before they could make anchor, the Captain told Kelley, they would have to present papers and surety to the Harbourmaster. The Trolog were hesitant around outsiders, the Captain explained, although he used a stronger word: Paranoid. Two Vessels were waiting sure enough; small runabouts loaded with Militia; they had boarding ladders but the Captain had already ordered a cargo net to be thrown over the side. The Trolog Guardsmen were surprisingly nimble climbers for aqua-folk; Kelley supposed it was because they were not fearful of falling into the water. The Captain met with their commander on the foredeck, below the arching cranes. He was short, like the other Trolog, but wore a stiff green cunt hat, and a pistol on his waist while the others all held thin-barrelled machine pistols strapped against there chests. Every Trol also carried some sort of spear launcher in a long leather holster fastened to the lower leg, fastened by cord to a loop held tight around the ankle. Unlike the Machine pistol, which looked virtually unused, Kelley supposed this would be the weapon a Trolog soldier would reach for, if anyone tried them. They were each loaded with a single pronged dart that would snare in flesh, impossible to remove without surgery, plus four more tucked into a bandolier around the thigh. A viscous weapon that could be used despite – or even during - extended submersion, unlike the Machine Pistols, Kelley supposed.

The Captain passed over his papers, and a cloth bag heavy with some bizarre local currency. There were quiet words exchanged, before the Trol commander made some invisible gesture and the Militia withdrew down the cargo net and into their boat. Watching them descend, Kelley spotted more soldiers – maybe a dozen or more - sitting just below the waterline, watching up at the boat. Paranoid indeed

Kelley stayed in the Cabin that night, while is partner Maecort explored the ship. She was not to leave without him, she promised, as her protection was Kelley's charge and indeed his purpose in coming here. If there was time in the morning, they would explore the city, Kelley said firmly. He still out ranked her, he figured, although on the far side of the world the idea of a 'Paladin' or 'Scribe' was hardly of importance.

Kelley watched the storm lash the city through his Cabin porthole, sitting in the calm, still silence. Lighting forked, the weight of the storm piling against the crusty scab of gothic civilization, resolutely clinging to the shallow island like a limpet to rock.

His mind wandered – across time and the vast ocean that now separated him from his life. Kelley would fight to control it, but in these times of solitude, when the weight of the world seemed so distant; those were the moments he found his mind would travel to places he did not wish to be, and he would clench his fists white, or drive his fingernails into the soft underside of his forearm, or simply bite the inside of his lip until the pain forced him to forget.

But it never worked for long.

And so, in the dark, above the faint sound of the wind and the lapping water against the hull, he heard her voice speak to him again.

_I love you_


	4. Chapter 3 Part II

Apart from a few cheerful breaks in the cloud, the morning presented itself much as the previous one had. During the night, it seemed some fault had been found in the cooling system of _Temperate Rain's _auxiliary reactor and engineers were busy donning bright yellow radiation-proof coveralls as Kelley followed Maecort through the narrow passageway that led out onto the Deck. Captain Dagen was amongst them.

"A whole day to get the pipes fixed, they're telling me" he said to Kelley, then muttered something about Trol extortionists under his breath. For the time being though, their time was there own.

"Don't wander too far" The captain threw as the pair slowly paced down the arching ramp toward the dockside "We make sail the moment we can, and I doubt you will want to be here much longer than necessary".

* * *

><p>The Docks were the oldest section of the city, serving the whalers when their filthy trade was the only business here; the dock had not worked at its current capacity since well before the great war. Of course, the obscure island had not been a direct target of the nuclear holocaust, only a victim by association as fallout had claimed its vegetation from trees to the last blades of grass. There were more 'people' on the island than there had ever been in the prehistory of the war; the dock was thrumming with cranes and workers, Trolog swimmers darting effortlessly about the black expanse of the bay, boarding ships to empty them of there cargos, or fill them again, before dashing back to the waters edge. In the middle of the roughly circular harbour sat two moored barges; simple wooden platforms that served as a rest area for the workers in down time. All around, trolleys rushed about on metal tracks, delivering goods to warehouses while cranes bobbed as a hungry flock of Ibis, feeding upon the entrails of the moored boats. The work was loud and filthy and without end.<p>

The rain eased mid-morning, and the beating sun cast into the winding, cobbled streets of the city, making them thick and uncomfortably muggy. In one briefing Kelley had been told that there was almost no ozone layer above Southern Australia, making the suns rays especially potent; now he knew what they meant.

The city slowly rose away from the docks toward a small peak some kilometres away. It seemed that the city had been built hurriedly, without great planning. Roads kinked unexpectedly, sometimes turning into major thoroughfares, occasionally narrowing without apparent purpose, and sometimes vanishing altogether. The going was one of constant dead reckoning and back tracking. The buildings were all double story, grey brick monstrosities, all hewn and set by the same method, which Kelley assumed was Trolog, perhaps mined from the sea floor where there handling would be simpler. They seemed to loom over the thin streets, as if bent by the weight of a stiff breeze, although the shadow did provide welcome relief. Above, boards had been lain on irregular occasion, crossing the breadth of the street from rooftop to rooftop to serve as bridges, connecting the city above the street level; most boards were no wider than the children who sat upon there edges, legs dangling as they watched the city pass by below.

Toward the centre of town, the streets grew wider and more crowded, until eventually the smell of fish and spices filled the air as the two entered some large plaza – an open air market thick with shoppers. Trolog comprised at least ninety percent of the population, which made the remainder easy to spot – like giants walking amongst them. Kelley immediately felt like everybody's eyes were looking at him; a giant amongst even the giants, with the tallest of the Trols barely reaching his navel. Still though, no one seemed to react as the pair strolled through the crowds bustling between food stalls.

Everyone had an umbrella. The streets were a sea of them; wheels of coloured material overlapping, their users unhindered. Maecort supposed they didn't like the sun either: after all, they were _fish. _She may have made this comment a little too loudly, and attracted some piercing looks. Kelley recalled the Captain using the same term in a less-than-complimentary context the day before, and cautioned his companion against using a term that may land them both in trouble during there short stay here. They kept walking.

The city was a mongrol child of geography and convenience. The land it occupied formed a half-bowl, shallowing concave toward the harbour, the lip a crest lined with a rock wall predating much of the township, and perhaps older than the docks themselves. The wall was little more than an inconvenience now, and in some places its sturdy foundations had been dismantled to create thoroughfares to the rolling plateau beyond. From atop the wall, the soft decent of the city made the flat mud roofs appear as trudging pavers stoped toward the beckoning expance of ocean. Beyond, the city had spilled out through the cracks in the walls and leached across the plateau, drying where it had pooled in the heat of the sun. buildings were shorter, and mixed with structures obviously built with pure haste as there only prerequisite. It was less of a civilisation, more of a camp, rudimentary and frenzied. The wall was guarded by Militia, and there seemed to be a tax tolled on those passing. Kelley and Maecort were not permitted. Beyond the boom gates, crowds of Trol beggers were assembled along the sidewalks, pestering at those who passed through to the far side.

At the highest point of the wall stood a single story building with a veranda on its rooftop covered by sailcloth, a small chalk A-frame advertising 'Lob, and Breakfast all day'. The two paused and looked at each other before climbing the stairs winding around the side of the building. Most of the patrons sat at a long wooden bar, drinking a light-coloured beer and talking quietly. There were a few round tables, with stools made from some sort of soft wood that creaked uncomfortably under Kelley's bulk as he sat down. A Trol barman, standing behind a counter polishing glasses vanished the moment they reached the top of the stairs, only to reappear now with a new set of chairs for the couple.

The menu was small, and 'Lob' featured prominently. They both settled for something that referenced fish, and sure enough fish was served cooked in some sort of vinegar that stung at Kelleys mouth. Maecort smiled sweetly, remarking 'At least it's cooked'.

Maecort had enquired as to the local currency before they had left the ship, and acquired some _Chells_ from a Trol loitering at the base of the boarding ramp in exchange for some cheap whiskey she had bought with the last of her Copper coins in Barrow, knowing that the strange, oddly shaped currency would be useless further south. She handed what she thought was enough to pay, and a tip, and received what she thought was the change. A young Trol, who was certainly no shorter than any other troll, spied them curiously as they paid, standing only as they descended the staircase back down to the street.

A few streets later, Kelley and Maecort suddenly found themselves surrounded by a ring of Trols. There were eight or nine of them, and young; like kids everywhere they couldn't resist disfiguring themselves for some perverse sense of fashion – most of them were shirtless and had rings lining the lip of there top gill, which stood like a run of six oblique slash marks above they lungs. Some carried tattoos across there bald heads; intricate swirls and ring patterns. All carried knives.

"Give us fuck Chell, pink" one announced, obviously the leader. English was not the native language here, or at least not a form of English that Humans could understand. Maecort pivoted, looking behind her. Further up the street, adult Trol were gathering and pointing.

"I'm sorry" Kelley said "I don't know what you mean"

"Don't fuck play, pinka. Give us fuck Chell, me slashes you"

The words were stilted, pronounced relatively correctly but with an alien pace, as if the young Trolog was forced to find breaks artificially between the words. The language they normally spoke, Kelley had overheard over the morning, was far more fluid, sounding less like words and more like warbling noise alternated with strange thrills and chirps.

Kelley put out his hands "You don't want that. We're leaving" He said, trying to sound assuring.

There was a noise behind, and Maecort gave a yelp. Kelley turned and saw one of the Trol grab a fist of her blonde hair, wrenching her down with such force as to pull her off down, her neck arching as she flailed backwards, forced down onto one knee. The troll holding her was especially beefy – thick arms obviously born of a lot of physical labour. Kelley reacted without a second of hesitation.

His foot shot upward, lancing out in a sidekick to impact heavily with the Trologs face: the force was enough to pick him off his feet, crunching down onto the hard cobble roadway surface a meter backward. Kelley turned, catching the wrist of the leader – a taller-than-average kid with a large tattoo covering from the back of his head up to about an inch before his left eye. Kelley jerked upwards violently, the knife dropping from his hand as he yelped, the bone popping in his grip. The others were starting to back away. Without warning, Kelley felt a stab of pressure from behind, like a fist thrown into thick clothing, dull yet solid it pushed him enough to stumble forward a pace. Maecort, who had retreated to the wall, gave out a scream. Kelley's hand reached around him, feeling something hard jutting out from the left side of his back. He grasped it and pulled hard, enough to wrench it free. A slick black metal dart was in his hand; he turned and the boy holding the launcher turned white, the spent weapon dangling loose between his fingers. Kelley reached out and pulled the weapon from his fading grip, the Trol too terrified by his own action, and Kelley's apparent resistance to it, that he had petrified to the spot.

There was the sound of a whistle, and running footsteps. A dozen militia burst into the alleyway, spear guns up. The Trol kids tried to scatter, and after a brief second of melee all of the kids were in metallic cuffs binding their wrists, face down on the ground. One of the Militia looked up at Kelley and said "Go".

Back at the ship, Kelley and Maecort relayed the story to a Trol who worked in the Engine room.

"It's unfortunate. I'm sorry" he said, quite apologetic "No job, no school. It's my people are hiding here until Teuthida all gone"

"What are the Teuthida?" Maecort asked, cocking her head slightly.

"Vampire" the Trol murmured, as if the words themselves were blasphemy and carried some weight of penalty.

* * *

><p>The two felt it would be better to spend the rest of the day on the ship.<p>

Back in the Cabin, Maecort closed the door and said, quietly "It seems like the skin works".

Kelley had almost forgotten. He peeled off his shirt and inspected the hole punched through the back of it, about the width of a finger where the dart had stabbed in. Maecort inspected the skin.

The entire purpose of the skin was that it was supposed to be almost unnoticed by the user; or at least, that what they supposed. A team had made the discovery while trawling through the D.C. ruins years ago, before that chapter decided to go native. The building had belonged to DARPA, a secret military projects agency for the US government to devise special technology to aid the war effort.

The skin seemed to be a prototype; a sort of armour that hugged the wearer like a thick bathing trunk, covering the upper arm and leg, as well as the torso to the neck. The fabric was flexible to a degree, but when enough force was directly asserted against it, it became immovably rigid. It was ribbed with bands of a synthetic, which the boffins had described to Kelley was like cartilage in the human body, which gave the suit structure and amplified the movements of the wearer, in a manner similar to power armour. Whatever the original use for the suit was, sneaking incognito into a foreign city seemed to come as a natural implication. It's name had come from the colour.

Maecort inspected the strike point, but could see little more than a grubby mark she wiped away with her thumb and spit. Afterward she picked up the shirt Kelley had placed beside him on the bed, and inspected the hole.

"I'll patch that up" she said quietly, adding "That's what a good wife would do".

"I can do it" Kelley said, standing.

There was a moments silence.

"Have we got a problem?" Maecort knotted her fingers together, trying to hold Kelleys gaze while every instinct told her not to.

Kelley wanted to ask what she meant, but already knew. "I'm not a talker, im sorry"

Maecort nodded "I understand. But this – this mission – I knew what it was when I signed up for it. This is a one-way ticket. Even if we succeed, there is no way for us to go home, that's why they picked us – no family, nothing to tie us to that world"

For a moment, Kelley saw a blink of that ghostly face in the dark, her words haunting.

Maecort continued "Anyway, I guess what im saying is id like to be able to talk to you, not as Brotherhood but as friends"

"I know" he said "and I am sorry. We're in this together for the long haul."

Maecort nodded, then retreated for the door, before turning again and saying "Oh, and thank you for what you did today"

Kelley smiled softly "My job" to which Maecort nodded and left. Kelley lay and stretched his arms out, rested his head back on the bed.

* * *

><p>It was almost a full day before the ship was underway. Leaving the island, the sea had clamed considerably, an impassive, flint morning sky offering little more than a stiff wind as the sea gates slid closed behind the churning water of <em>Temperate Rain's <em>screws, the island coming into full view as the large ship swung southward, slowly retreating beyond the perceptible arch of the black-blue sea until it had finally vanished from sight.

The ship found its rhumb line due south. The strait here maintained its persistent roll, churning against the hull, but the sky was clear and long, high clouds showed some hint of land lurking beyond the horizon, bringing calm to Kelley's mind.

At around midday, as if crossing some natural meridian, the water below the vessel became slack and a relaxation came upon the crew as if a collective migraine suddenly relieved, the quality palpable across the deck. Kelley and Maecort stood upon the foredeck just aft of a large chrome-steel deckgun – a bizarre collaboration of tubes, barrels and levers that could be set to action by a man strapped to a chair looking through a thin prism paralleling the bore of the gun. They smelt the thick smack of fresh gunoil mix with salt spray and heard the pulse of the engines, the crew slowing there pace, moving to the gunwales and leaning peacefully, talking quietly between themselves, watching the serene surface of the water speed past below. There was a shout in some common tongue, drawing attention to a shape bursting from the surface no more than a hundred yards from the portside. A playful plesiosaur calf reared its head and let a bellowing squawk play across the waves and the ship, the animal rolling and collapsing back into the water with a shunt of foam as its flipper smacked against the swell. More plesiosaurs surfaced, larger and closer creatures; they barked and arched up there necks, mighty chests plowing through the foam before sharp heads dived with swan-like grace, leading the vast maroon bulk of the creatures back into the expanse of ocean.

"It's good luck" someone shouted out to the traveling pair. The sailor was young, with a grease-licked face and work-blackened fingers "The monsters only come up when the sealurk are asleep"

"What about Teuthida?" Maecort probed, inquisitive. The young sailor shook his head.

"Not this time of year, this far north" He said absently, pausing he added "We'll make the island by sundown, Presaria City tomorrow evening".

Maecort nodded.

"You're from America, right? Are you NCR?" The sailor asked, his curiosity a struggle between his manly form and boyish age. The question chilled Kelley, but Maecort smiled and nodded politely.

"We had NCR once before, when they first came down here. Now they charter Presaria Navy cutters from off the coast, or steam direct, except for you two, of course."

Maecort looked out to sea, and said softly "We know".

* * *

><p>Dinner was taken in a passengers galley aft of the steerage quarter. They were basic meals, prepared and preserved for weeks at sea, although mixed in with fresh fruit and meats presumably from Flinders island or perhaps Barrow. A few other passengers were about, although Kelley and Maecort had done there best to avoid contact with them. There was some manner of professor, Maecort had noted, who spent copious time scribbling longhand onto blank pages, entirely untroubled by the roll of the ocean in a way only a truly occupied person may ignore the world about them. Others, perhaps a teacher, and some rougher working types who mixed well with the crew. The pair had so far survived quite comfortably with there cover story, that they were a married couple from NCR coming to see a friend who has work for them. There was a friend, of course, although his cover was far more elaborate after almost a decade living in the city. They made themselves discreet, and hoped they would be passed off as engineers or surveyors, something educated but still practical, although there exact professions were never asked after. A natural suspicion of that foreign and alien was a necessary survival skill, regardless of your origin in the wastes.<p>

Eating, Kelley felt the sound of the ship change subtly, pricking his ears up. Maecorts eyes caught his alert stance, and pulled back, curious.

Something hard struck the hull.

The impact was not enough to throw; rather the jar of something large forcing its way past something equally heavy. There was a clatter on the steel, and for a moment the bulkhead beyond the galley creaked as something pushed directly against it before tumbling further aft and disappearing, clicking and scraping like a comb raking across it. A mechanical bell tolled loudly, and the ships foghorn emitted a sudden bleat, filling the silent air with dread. Kelley grabbed Maecort by the wrist and ran topside.

Sailors were everywhere, running in formations of four or five, most holding lanterns or electric flashlights, some boatpoles and hooks, some readying long-barrelled nook rifles as they jogged to there posts, glancing over the railing and into the murky swell. The deckgun was manned, with a team of loaders poised above a thin magazine hatch ready to cycle rounds into the weapon with the efficency of a steam engine. A large electric floodlight spat a wide cone of white light out over the ocean, compensating for the mere hint of blue still visable after the sun had dropped nearly an hour before. The air was cold – colder than what Kelley recalled from only half an hour before – and wind constant as the ship powered on.

Shouts started coming, echoed up the deck by the chain of soldiers forming the defences.

"Three hundred meters, Portside, Black lump in the water!" Kelley felt compelled to join in the chorus, narrating the scene as if from a bizarre pantomime.

A call was relayed back from the Captain to the deck gun: "Light it up!"

The gun fired; a blurred beat of bass thumps, the flashing of yellow and white that burst out from the nose of the ship, apparently simultaneous with an explosion of foam and sparks as the shells detonated into the waves. The loading team cycled the breach in a moment, slotting a clutch of foot-long _en bloc _rounds into the metallic magazine well. The breach snapped closed and the master shouted "Gun ready". Already the gun had a target, and fired again, angling further down, closer to the bow of the ship, spearing into the choppy surface. The gun thumped, recoiling with each blast, rounds impacting the sea with explosion of foam towering above the deck. Steaming brass shells rattled out over the deck, clattering about the feet of the sailors.

Below them, in the water, something moaned. A long, terrible bellow.

Kelley and Maecort came to the gunwale, straining their eyes to see in the darkness, the cone of the deckgun floodlight highlighting nothing but surf and rolling waves. Sailors bent over the railings, hanging there heavy, boxy flashlights over the edge, probing the wake at the waterline.

And then something surfaced. It was jet black, and glinted light with a sheen greater than what water may have imposed upon it, shimmering as a long hump rose up just shy of the vessel, obviously unfettered by the turbulent weight of the passing ship. It rose almost ten foot above the water, slowly sloping back to make the entire shape more than a hundred feet long, a stretched ovoid paralleling the ship no more than fourty yards out.

The creature rolled. The jet black represented some manner of crustacean carapace, evidenced by three heavy worn, fist sized holes that had been blasted through it, scored deeply into the armored beast. As it curled and flipped in the water, the shell ended with an abrupt overhand, revealing a deeply grooved chitinous thorax studded with a dozen legs, each backward- hinged at a mid-point (to call them knees is a stretch), spasming at the sky. The water beside the beast boiled for a moment as a claw pulled through the surface, arching up as the creature inverted; the claw was at least half the length of its massive body, slender and bladed and sharp enough to puncture the skin of a ship; a horrific weapon.

It's mouth broke the waterline, and was anything but crustacean; it wailed through a sea of razor teeth an a bulbous, scaly black tongue, segmented armor lips peeling open to reveal the depth of the dark chasm; a monstrous aberration of man and beast – an abhorrent nuclear mutation of flesh. And a single eye; itself too human, a white bulb threaded with orange veins, an iris of stone grey and a dark pupil – piercing in its gaze, sweeping across the outline of the ship with an evil, profane intellect.

It moaned, deep and loud, a warble of distinct pain.

The sailors fired. The nook rifles blurted out a flurry of sabot, shredding into the soft belly of the listing creature. Its moans became howls, spastic and ill controlled, a high-pitched strain like pressurized gas escaping an open bottle. The creature stayed buoyant for a mere moment more, its eye still sliding across the vessel, then slowly it subsided, sinking below the swell.

Maecort fell asleep, finally, in the early hours. Kelley was awake until sun breached the horizon above the fog-skirted coastline of Tasmania, listening to the sound of the ocean below the ship, and the miles left to travel.


End file.
